Promoted to Love Interest

Edit Locked

So. You're adapting this great book for the screen. It's got action, comedy, drama, rom...what, it doesn't have romance? Well, that won't do; we can't break the formula. Looks like it's time for a previously platonic character to be Promoted To Love Interest.

The idea is that in order to appeal to a broad audience, we need romantic subplots. An original and successful work (usually not film, because that's where executives have a field day) survived all on its own without a romance subplot . However, studios think that every story needs romance.

Although normally reserved to adaptations in traditional media, interactive media that feature Romance Sidequests can also fall under this, if a character whom the Player Character cannot woo in one game gets a Romance Arc of their own in a sequel.

Examples:

open/close all folders

Anime and Manga

The closest thing to an original canon for Black★Rock Shooter is a music video of the eponymous character fighting Dead Master. Once people started making actual stories, Dead Master ended up as the love interest in one manga, the "other self" of BRS's "other self"'s love interest in both anime, BRS's mother figure in the gag manga, and nonexistent in the game.

Bleach: Word of God has stated it's not a romance manga, which is why the main characters have no romance and any romance that does get covered is either in the background or part of another character's back story. However, in the anime filler arc, the Gotei 13 Invasion, the anime team demote all the main cast and even the secondary cast to extras in favour of their filler villains and heroine and their filler evil clones. To ensure there's romance in the arc, they make Kon the hero of the arc (demoting even the main character) by promoting him to the filler heroine's love interest (even changing his back story to accommodate her).

Rose is a small character in the manga. In the 2003 anime she returns partway through the series and becomes a major character. There is Ship Tease between her and Edward, and she is canonically in love with Ed.

This happened somewhat to Yue Ayase in the Mahou Sensei Negima! anime. While it was just barely alluded to in the Class Trip arc (which is where they likely drew it from), the love triangle plot come into play much later in the manga.

Rin, one of Saki's bodyguards, develops feelings for Rito after he saves her from a cursed sword (with the help of Mea and Yami).

Kyoko was born as fictonial character of her Show Within a Show. After, she appears as real character and became Run's best friend and in "Darkness" she fall for Rito herself after being subjected to the "Princess Carry".

In Trigun, Meryl and Milly care deeply about Vash and Wolfwood, but it doesn't go beyond anything platonic. In the anime adaptation they become their respective love interests, and its even implied that Wolfwood and Milly have sex with each other later in the series.

Valkyria Chronicles anime adaptation has promoted Faldio to love interest in order to introduce a Love Triangle. Not only totally unnecessary considering the existing romantic subplot, but it's become a rather large Romantic Plot Tumor. For instance, a rather epic battle in the game against an enormous overpowered tank was completely avoided in the anime to allow Alicia and Faldio time to flirt.

Nitori had a mild crush on Takatsuki in Wandering Son that went away by the time she dated Anna. The anime keeps Anna and Nitori together but has multiple scenes showing Nitori likes Takatsuki. It isn't helped that the anime ends right after Anna broke up with Nitori, leaving room for Takatsuki/Nitori potentially. In the manga Nitori and Anna end up back together but the anime adaptation never went that far..

In the Yo-kai Watch video games Katie is the female protagonist. In the Yo-kai Watch anime she is the crush and classmate of Nate, the male playable character in the games.

The adaptation of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link has both the original Zelda and the sleeping Zelda fighting over Link. In the games the Zelda from the first game doesn't even appear in the sequel, and the sleeping Zelda simply gives Link a "Thank You" kiss after he awakens her.

In the Rurouni Kenshin manga, Yahiko and Tsubame were never fully shown as a couple though they did marry anyway. The anime shows Yahiko nursing a big' crush on Tsubame, and on several occasions he gives her presents as well as goes on social activities with her.

Comic Books

In Teen Titans: Earth One, Victor Stone and Tara Markov are portrayed as a high-school couple, despite never having been shown to have any interest in each other in other continuities.

In Timestorm 2009-2099, which features an alternate version of the Marvel 2099 universe, teenaged Miguel O'Hara has a bit of UST with Shakdi Hadaad (who in regular continuity is Cerebra of the X-Men 2099). Their counterparts in the regular 2099 universe never even met.

Stormer and Kimber became very close friends in one episode of Jem. The 2015 comic reboot makes them a couple.

Liz Sherman from Hellboy. In the comicbooks, she's Hellboy's co-worker and friend, and something of a little sister. In the movies, she ends up boinking Hellboy. It did give her some character, since in the comics, she's mostly a Flat Character that the author has no idea to do with and only narrowly avoided killing off. (Her first four comics appearances all involve an antagonist sucking her power out for his own ends, which was apparently the only plot Mignola could think of for her.) Mignola actually okayed the Re Tool of her character.

Interestingly, in the comics Liz actually has something of a romantic sub-plot with Abe Sapien, professional fish-person and Hellboy's best friend. Still, this sub-plot is extremely subdued, but it does get played up a bit in the animated adaptations.

Somewhat (and very surprisingly) averted in the movie adaptation to I, Robot. Both the male lead and the female lead are very attractive, yet they never get romantically involved. Well, not explicitly, but there are hints at it, and Susan Calvin in the short stories was an elderly, celibate misanthrope after the first few Time Skips. She gets upgraded to a Hot Scientist, and at least a potential love interest, but thankfully they focused on the robots and the related ideals.

For the movie adaptation of Watchmen it was originally planned to give Rorschach a love interest since his actions drive the whole story. But the idea was dropped.

The 1960 film adaptation is an Alternate Trope Namer. In the book, an Eloi woman named Weena shares a close relationship with the Time Traveler, but not a romance, at least not overtly. Largely because Weena, like all Eloi, was a child-sized androgynous-looking creature mentally on the level of an eight-year old. However, the film turns Weena into a love interest, looking human except still with the mentality of a child.

The 2002 film goes further: not only was Weena replaced with a love interest named Mara and the Eloi made even less childlike, but the Time Traveler was given an entire backstory of building the machine as a way to save his girlfriend from being killed by a mugger.

Isabella of France in Braveheart was in France and ten years old at the time of Wallace's rebellion. Particularly unfortunate as her romantic subplot is at cross-purposes with some of the most powerful moments in the film.

The 1966 film version of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 not only had Clarisse survive, but also had her become a sort of love interest for Guy.

In a move that savvy movie goers could have seen coming, the Star Trek movie does this to Lt. Uhura. What they probably didn't see coming was that she's Spock's love interest, not Kirk's. Which is less surprising if you keep in mind a couple of early episodes of the original series in which she was blatantly flirting with him (and, more strangely given his later characterization, him with her!). Of course, given the time period of the original series, the only reason Uhura wasn't officially anyone's love interest was probably because of the interracial relationship thing. Word of God did once say he had dropped the idea of Spock/Uhura in the original series because he feared it would reduce Uhura to being viewed as nothing more than "Spock's other half" instead of letting her being a character in her own right.

Trillian in the film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In the original, Arthur met her at a party and tried to (clumsily) chat her up, only for Zaphod to sweep her off her feet and take her into space; when they meet up later on, their relationship is purely platonic. The movie changes this to Arthur missing his chance at True Love by being too wimpy, inspiring him to be more assertive when Trillian gets kidnapped (also helped by introducing a new love interest for Zaphod).

Starship Troopers does this with "Dizzy" Flores who, in the book, is a guy in the same platoon as Rico, and is only mentioned in the first chapter, due to the fact that he dies during a drop, and is not romantic at all. (Per the other wiki and, you know, the book.) [1] Of course, Dizzy gets an upgrade with boobs and boinked. It's good both ways.

In the movie of the children's book Tuck Everlasting, the main character, Winnie, is a teenager and thus old enough to have a romance with a Flying Dutchman who's been seventeen for ages. In the book, she was a preteen with perhaps a slight implied crush on him and nothing more.

This is actually inverted in the movie adaptation of Psycho. In the original novel Lila and Sam become romantically involved after Mary is killed and they try to solve her murder. Hitchcock made their relationship platonic in the film, because it would be gross otherwise. In the 1982 sequel Psycho II, though, Lila has married Sam and had a daughter with him, called Mary.

One of the changes made in the film version of Kick-Ass. In the film, he ends up boinking with the girl he's got a crush on. In the novel, he ends up crumpled on the floor at high school due to a Groin Attack from her boyfriend.

The 1960 film version of Edgar Allan Poe's Fall of the House of Usher makes Madeline the fiancée of the narrator.

The film version of Queen of the Damned made the main subplot a romance between the two main characters Lestat and Jesse, who, in the book, do not speak. One of the many things altered from the book is the identity of Jesse's maker. In the book, it's her "Aunt" Maharet (a distant ancestor-turned-vampire). In the movie, it's Lestat. This was obviously meant to reinforce the bond between the characters, which was never there in the book.

Inverted in the film Shooter which is based on the Stephen Hunter novel Point of Impact. In the book Bob Lee Swagger becomes romantically involved with the widow of his old war buddy. In the movie the two become friends and allies, but they do not fall in love with each other.

The 2009 film of Land of the Lost has a truly bizarre version of this. Rick Marshall has a romantic relationship with Holly, who was his prepubescent daughter in the original TV show. The movie makes them unrelated and ages her up, obviously, but one wonders why they even bothered to call her "Holly" at that point.

The Man Who Fell to Earth promotes the middle-aged hotel maid Betty Jo, who nurses an unrequited crush on Alien Among Us Thomas Jerome Newton and is one of his only confidantes in the novel, to an out-and-out love interest. Renamed Mary-Lou, she's also de-aged to her mid-twenties when their relationship, which plays out over several decades, begins.

Inverted with the Disney version of Peter Pan, which removes virtually any trace of romance between Peter and Wendy present in the original book. Those only familiar with that version mistakenly believe this trope to be at play with the 2003 film version which was adapted closer to the novel.

In The Giver, Fiona is a good friend of Jonas's whom he eventually drifts apart from (although he's definitely interested in her). In the filmhe manages to convince her to stop taking the injections and she realizes she loves him as well. She eventually aids in his escape and he promises her he'd come back for her.

Ramona and Beezus promotes Henry Huggins, Beezus's childhood friend in the books, into her love interest, although the Ramona books imply that the two aren't so close any more since they're in middle school.

Attack on Titan already takes many, many liberties from the manga, but one of the biggest is the relationship between Eren and Mikasa. In the original, they are adopted siblings (though there are many, many hints that Mikasa sees Eren as more than a brother), while the adaptation drops the adopted sibling angle and goes for a full-on romance between them. While this may not sit well with traditionalists, it's safe to assume those who ship Eren/Mikasa couldn't be happier (not that them being canonically adoptive siblings ever stopped them in the first place).

The movie franchise adds several hints of a romantic development to Effie and Haymitch's relationship, especially in the two parts of Mockingjay. One suspects this has less to do with the need for yet another romance in the series and more to strengthen the expansion of Effie's character, since she has only a cameo in the last book but plays a far more significant role in the films. There's also the fact that Elizabeth Banks, whose performance was the very reason the series creator Suzanne Collins chose to spare Effie from her planned Demotion To Extra in the first place, was a pretty hardcore Shipper on Deck for the pairing by all accounts.

Catching Fire hints at Johanna having a one-sided romantic attachment to Finnick, giving her a bitter speech about his (to her) incomprehensible devotion to Annie. The idea that she might be in love with him pads out her motivations some more than in the books, where she treats him with slightly less disdain than she does everyone else but with no reason given; it also explains why, despite claiming that she's already lost everyone she loves and has nothing to lose, he seems to be the one to convince her to join the rebellion against the Capitol.

Averted only through the author's stubbornness in the movie adaptation of Ender's Game. Executives originally wanted to give Ender a love interest but the original author refused. Though Ender's friend Petra's role got expanded in the adaptation and her personality was changed so their relationship strongly resembled a romantic one, despite being entirely platonic.

In the Dead or Alive games the movie is based on, Ryu Hayabusa (same of Ninja Gaiden) protects Kasumi because he made a promise to her brother, his best friend Hayate, to look after her. The film keeps that backstory, but makes it clear Hayabusa is also watching out for her because he has feelings for her (which she ends up returning).

In the games, Ayane and Hayate are half-siblings (and cousins, it's complicated). The movie removes their blood relation and turns them into a couple.

The movie seems so determined to include romantic subplots for just about every main character that it even invented new characters to serve as love interests for Christie and Helena: conman/master thief Max (who is also Christie's frequent partner-in-crime) and tech genius Weatherby, respectively.

Surprisingly averted, however, with Tina and Zack. Zack still flirts with her, but Tina wants nothing to do with him.

Jurassic Park turns Ellie into Alan Grant's girlfriend in addition to being his student. The second book does say something about Ellie being "involved" with Grant, but doesn't specify if it was romantic. Ironically in the film's canon, they've split up by the third.

Literature

Leaving aside the unfilmableindescribable nature of a lot of his stuff, this is probably the recurring problem with attempts at filming the works of H.P. Lovecraft, who was a very unromantic guy and didn't put any love subplots into his stories at all. Apparently, Guillermo del Toro's upcoming version of At the Mountains of Madness will avert this trope, which is why it took him so long to get the permission of producers.

Adaptations and pastiches featuring Sherlock Holmes almost always do this to Irene Adler, the one person to outsmart and upstage Holmes, who Holmes refers to as "the Woman". Canonically, Holmes only ever had one brief meeting with Adler, and his feelings for her are more along the lines of grudging admiration. There's also the fact that the one story that Adler appears in revolves around her running off to marry someone else, with Holmes being the best man, no less (Due to him standing outside the church after the couple realized that they forgot to bring some witnesses to the wedding). Even if Holmes was into relationships, Irene seems pretty stoked with her hot lawyer husband.

Most adaptations of Dracula make Mina Murray Harker (or her equivalent, as sometimes her role and that of Lucy Westenra are flipped or combined) into the title character's love interest, a trend that's often attributed to Bram Stoker's Dracula (the film), which made Mina the reincarnation of Vlad Tepes' bride Elisabeta. However, a similar incident occurred in the 1970 TV version, where Lucy looked like Dracula's lost love, and even the 1950s Hammer Horror version referred to Dracula in the posters as "the terrifying lover who died—yet lived!" In the book, there was indeed a vague indication that Dracula intended for her to become his queen, but Mina regarded this as a Fate Worse Than Death, complete with all the rape associations that went along with this.

Which was doubly inverted in the movie, where Mina's husband is dead and she has no affair with Quatermaine. Sawyer flirts with her a bit and she did have an affair with Dorian Grey in the past, but it's implied that her years of living as a vampire have left her unable to really love anyone.

In the Novelization of Douglas Adams' Development HellDoctor Who episode Shada, the Fourth Doctor gets some fun sexual tension with a sentient spaceship. In the original her role is simply to be confused by him with a Logic Bomb, but in the book the experience (along with him also teaching her how to time travel in a way suggestively related to him teaching her how to orgasm) makes her curious about the world and eventually fall for the Doctor, who for his part is respectful but not very reciprocal of her feelings - though it's worth pointing out that when he attempts to guilt Skagra about trying to destroy the Ship, his retort (that 'a machine consciousness is worthless') is the This Means War! moment.

Chris and Clare also become love interests for each other, though this was an element that Douglas Adams had intended to put in the story, managed to get elements of in the first couple of episodes, but then got cut thanks to a combination of deadlines and Executive Meddling. So in this case, it's more of a What Could Have Been.

Jack Robinson in Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. In the novels he is a Happily Married middle-aged man Phryne has no romantic interest in. Phryne's canon love interest in the novels, Lin Chung, only appears in one episode of the series ("Ruddy Gore").

Subverted surprisingly in Elementary. Despite the fact John is now a woman there is no explicit romance between Sherlock and Joan. However there is an example with Moriarty and Sherlock, as she has also been genderswapped and combined with Irene. Their relationship is different though as Sherlock didn't know her true identity at first and she didn't really love him.

The Goosebumps tv series seems to do this for Steve and Carly Beth. In its adaptation of "The Haunted Mask," Chuck and Steve confess to the masked Carly Beth that they only teased her "because we liked her," something the book never mentioned or even hinted at. The later episode "The Haunted Mask II" makes significant changes to the plot of the corresponding book, including Steve getting his mask off through The Power of Love when he makes a Heroic Sacrifice to save Carly Beth from the first mask (again, something that never even came up in the book's version of the plot).

Game of Thrones did this to two supporting characters, Grey Worm and Missandei. In the books, Missandei is only a ten-year-old child and there's not much interaction between them. In the show, she's given an Age Lift and the writers paired her with Grey Worm which started when she taught him to speak the Common Language.

The play The Solid Gold Cadillac had a relatively low-key romance between Mrs. Laura Partridge and Ed McKeever, even though the narration referred to the couple as "Cinderella" and "Prince Charming," who (of course) were married in the end. The movie version is much more of a romantic comedy, playing up the romance between McKeever and Mrs.Miss Partridge to an extent that the Tabloid Melodrama about the characters is fairly justified.

In the stage musical of Beauty and the Beast, Cogsworth and the wardrobe are portrayed as a couple, but are much more reserved about it than Lumiere and the duster.

In the musical of The Producers the previously minor part of Swedish secretary Ulla is not only expanded into leading lady but she becomes Bloom's love interest and briefly is the center of a one-sided Love Triangle between him and Max.

The musical adaptation of The Scarlet Pimpernel adds a romantic history for the villain Chauvelin and the heroine Marguerite, making the former something of The Vamp, since the latter used to be on his side. In the original novel, they were nothing more than acquaintances in the past and Chauvelin sees Marguerite as nothing but "a tool" now, his faith in her intellect to help him nab the Scarlet Pimpernel and his constant Terms of Endangerment aside.

In Seussical, Horton gets a lover interest in Gertrude McFuzz, a character from another of Seuss' books.

The Wicked Witch of the West and the Scarecrow are promoted to being love interests in the musical Wicked, based on a book of the same name. It seems really Squicky unless you've actually seen the musical ( Wicked Witch Elphaba turned Fiyero, her boyfriend, into the scarecrow to keep him from being tortured to death). After that, it's all just an interesting Alternative Character Interpretation.

The musical adaptation of School of Rock does this to Dewey's boss Ms. Mullins. Aside from them kissing a couple times and them making her younger and around Dewey's age, this does not alter the plot that much from the film. This has some justification in that the original script did have the two ending up together.

Sister Act the Musical rewrites Lt. Eddie Souther as an old high school classmate of Deloris who secretly has a crush on her, and at the end, the two end up becoming a couple. They had no such relationship in the original film, however.

Video Games

Nakaba Hanabusa from the visual novel Clock Zero originally didn't have a route of his own in the PS2 and PSP ports of the game despite all of the members of Clock Zero being romanceable options for Nadeshiko. This, in spite of extra materials all but stating that all of the boys in her club, including him, are in love with her regardless of route. Come the latest Vita port and after much demand from the fans, Nakaba finally gets a route of his own!

When the Takarazuka stage adaptation Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney was announced, fans who were familiar with the Takarazuka's penchant for adding in romantic subplots speculated wildly on who'd end up as Phoenix's love interest, with guesses ranging from the plausible (Mia, Maya) to the highly unlikely (Edgeworth). In the end, the one who got the promotion was, of all people, Lana Skye (well, they called her Leona, but if it walks like a Lana and quacks like a Lana...), a character who appears in only one case (albeit a fairly long one) and doesn't have any particular history or chemistry with Phoenix.

In the Mass Effect series, Garrus and Tali weren't originally intended as romance options. Fans liked them so much that they were added to the roster of possible love interests in the second game. Funnily enough, if Shepard pursues neither of them, they hook up with each other near the end of the third game. Additionally, Kaidan Alenko (assuming he survives that long) is promoted to love interest for Male!Shepard in Mass Effect 3, having previously been exclusively susceptible to FemShep's charms.

Crea's route in Duel Savior Destiny mostly replaces the harem route from the original game, though in order to accommodate this change they made surprisingly few tweaks to the original story, which makes Crea not really fit in very well with what's going on.

In the original Dragon Quest VIII, Jessica was a friend of the hero and her feeling for him were platonic while in the 3ds version, there's an alternative ending where the hero marries her instead of Medea.

The franchise usually follows the No Hugging, No Kissing rule to the extreme - justified since the characters are cyborgs who don't reproduce that way - but in the second and third movies, Matau noticeably flirts with Nokama quite a bit and there are some pretty noticeable hints that Nokama herself is into Vakama. The third movie also involves an Unholy Matrimony plot with the villains. (Other Bionicle media does include this stuff, but pretty much only to keep consistent with the movies. In the case of the Unholy Matrimony, Word of God writes off "marriage" as strictly political in this 'verse.)

In the first movie, there are some incredibly obvious hints that Hahli and Jaller like each other, though this was back before the hugging/kissing rule was really brought in.

The fourth movie took place in a world where the characters weren't nonromantic cyborgs, and one of the female characters (well, the only one to ever get a spotlight, anyway), Kiina, has shown feelings toward Berix — which Word of God promptly declared to be a show of mere sympathy. However in the sequel novel, Kiina was then promoted to a romantic interest, for real, to the movie's main hero Mata Nui. But as the storyline was still targeted at a younger male audience (who, according to the creators, are still afraid of cooties), and since Mata Nui was an outcast from the no-romance world and also had to turn back into an Humongous Mecha, this "relationship" didn't last beyond one small reference in the novel.

Happened to Spider-Woman in the Iron Man cartoon. Considering the Merchandise-Driven nature of the show, this was assuredly so that they could give Tony Stark a love interest who could get a toy.

The Spectacular Spider-Maninverts this in the case of Mary Jane Watson. In the comics, she's one of several Love Interests for Peter, albeit the one he finally married (until One More Day, at least). In most adaptations, most notably the movies, she's given a greater role while the others are reduced, cut or combined with her. In Spectacular she goes with Peter to a dance in her first appearance, but is otherwise just a friend—the main love interests are Gwen Stacy and Liz Allan (plus some heavy-duty flirting from Black Cat when she appears). However, there were five seasons planned and according to Word of God, Mary Jane would have eventually been promoted. Notable in that Gwen Stacy would still be alive.

Almost none of the couples in the Young Justice animated series are present in the comic; Miss Martian and Superboy are paired up together despite the former being single and the latter being in a relationship with Wonder Girl II in the comic; the Artemis from the comic is a villain and never had a relationship with Kid Flash; on the other hand, Speedy and Cheshire did get together and have a daughter in the comic. Robin (Dick Grayson) and Zatanna are an interesting variation. In the series, Zatanna is a teenager roughly the same age as the rest of the main cast, rather than being around the same age as Batman. Zatanna has been a romantic interest for Batman in certain continuities. Dick and Zatanna only dated for a short time on the series anyways. The tie-in comic also reveals that he dated Rocket at some point and currently has an ill-defined thing with Batgirl.

In Teen Titans, Kid Flash is paired with Jinx, who is also a supervillain with whom he had no relationship in the comics. So apparently he has a type. And it's inverted with Beast Boy and Raven. While in the comics that were out at the time had them in a romantic relationship, in the cartoon they have more of a brother-sister relationship instead. Canonically. Don't tell the shippers.

Teen Titans Go! is based on the aforementioned cartoon but is set in an Alternate Universe. Raven and Beast Boy are no longer platonic, and Cyborg gets teased a lot with Jinx. Inverted with Starfire and Robin. Robin is head-over-heels for Starfire but many jokes are made about how Starfire only likes him platonically (though Depending on the Writer there are some implications she may like Robin).

From another DC animation: in Justice League, we have Hawkgirl and Green Lantern John Stewart. In the Unlimited seasons, she went into comics canon pairing with Carter Hall, but John engaged in a relationship with Vixen, which fits this trope. Also, Huntress and the Question.

The Legend of Zelda is cartoon infamous for this. Zelda and Link are given an Age Lift and Link is constantly asking for a kiss. In The Legend of Zelda I there is nothing to suggest anything between them besides Link saving Zelda, plus they're both in their "young" forms rather than their teenage versions.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy